I've seen this trailer shared around Facebook all morning and many of my friends who are long time Star Wars fans are optimistic, based on the little bit shown.

Personally, I feel like part of the reason the original 3 movies were viewed as so superior to episodes 1-3 had a lot to do with the limitations of the technology of the time preventing everything from being "overdone".

Starr Wars featured enough visually amazing things (from the Imperial Star Destroyer coming on the screen and viewers slowly realizing just how massive it was, to each one of the interesting robots) that appreciating them fully required not cluttering the scenes up with too much other eye candy or content. Back in 1977, that wasn't an issue because it was difficult and time-consuming enough to create these things that nobody would make the mistake of putting too many of them in one scene.

The computer CGI capabilities of today made it too easy to make scenes too "busy" and cheapen the value of individual creatures, backdrops, weapons, spaceships or robots. The prequel movies felt like they were trying to see how many thousands of objects they could render at the same time in some of the battle scenes. (EG. Jedi knights chopping and hacking away at robots in wave after wave.) Believability suffered.

If they go back to simple sets like the desert of Tatooine and stop going "CGI crazy" with every single background, I think there's a good chance they'll achieve the original Star Wars feel we all know and love. (And yeah, no insipid characters like Jar Jar either.)

I think you're neglecting the fact that with larger storage capacities come new options.

Sure, right now you see a lot of people with a 1TB drive that's not nearly full. But I also see quite a few people who fill up really large amounts of drive space with photo, music and video libraries. With enough cheap storage, more people can store music in an uncompressed, lossless format (like FLAC) instead of compromising sound quality with MP3 or AAC just to save space. Digital cameras have gone from 1 or 2 megapixel to 14-18 megapixel in many cases, generating much larger image files for still photos, too. And even your commercial video games are taking up exponentially more drive space than they used to, as developers decide to tell stories with full-screen hi-res video, vs. scrolling a few lines of text up a screen to summarize things, and as they build large 3D worlds you can run around in and fully explore.

Another culprit for sucking up disk space in a corporate setting is DropBox. Companies using the paid "Teams" version wind up with everyone's copy of the software downloading and syncing ALL of the content stored in the shared folders. So instead of just keeping YOUR data, you now have a copy of the whole team/division/company's data you're all storing there. (Yes, you can use "selective sync" to trim this back down. But except for folders you know you have no use for at all, it's preferable to sync it all so you have immediate access to anything your co-workers intended to make available, even if you're not by an Internet connection.)

Mag tape is definitely on the way out, because it's slow and the drives require regular maintenance to keep them working reliably. Sure, it meets your "requirements" - but I'd argue that MOST businesses really don't need to do things the way you've proposed in order to have a more than reasonable amount of data security.

I've never been a big fan of flash storage as archival backup. Even for consumers only needing a backup of a small photo collection or what-not? Putting it on thumb drives winds up being a false sense of security when the cheap Asian flash chip fails suddenly, with no advance warning, as soon as the drive is plugged into a USB port to access it.

But I can still pull archived ZIP files off of CDRs we burned in 1996-97 -- in response to your "But go pull the post-close EOY General Journal from 1996 off of one, I dare you." comment.

And most of what you're really talking about isn't backup/archiving, but rather, disaster recovery (having multiple copies of the data in different cities and states). There's no reason TAPE makes that any easier than other forms of media. In fact, today's easiest way to accomplish that is using cloud storage with reliable services who already have redundant data centers and backups done at all sites.

That's what some of the service techs were getting paid to do on-site service for Dell, last time I checked. And that's in the DC metro area, where cost of living is way high!

Gee... I wonder why people aren't lining up to take those job offers?!

Is this really a big factor? I'm just asking because the trend I've witnessed in recent years has been towards ensuring the cops live where they work. The last couple places I've lived, they had special tax credits or break for police officers so they could purchase homes at a discount in the community they worked in.

I can see how police might need a little more time to learn a neighborhood, if they're getting transferred around from department to department -- or if their department is asked to cover a large area. But small communities with their own little police departments seem to be among the more corrupt and trouble-prone. (Ferguson is a very small community in St. Louis, MO, for example.)

It seems to me like this problem will eventually cause people to look into ways to automate the bean picking process, and remove much of the labor-intensiveness?

It's not like this hasn't been an issue before with other crops.... I get the idea that the only reason this has been done with all the manual labor for so long is geography. The beans are grown primarily in places where labor is dirt cheap.

Paying the farmers more will happen naturally if chocolate gets too scarce. (Companies intent on making cheap candy will use very little cacao in whatever they sell, and those interested in really good chocolate candy will up the price.) But those with a vested interest in getting large supplies of cacao beans at as low a price as possible will probably invest in technology to harvest them more efficiently. Get directly involved in the process, opening up farming operations using the machinery -- and you've got your own supplier that you own and control. Not a bad solution, really -- and will bring costs back down again.

I've been primarily a Mac user since 1999 or 2000, and I've watched the serviceability of Apple's machines go back and forth over the years. Before they moved to the Intel processor, you often had very limited options to do anything with the configuration you purchased, even when the machine in question was a tower type desktop computer. RAM was generally not an issue, although Apple sometimes required very specific timing for the DIMM modules - limiting what you could put in. But certainly, upgraded video was a problem (very limited in which cards could be used as upgrades - including cases like the G4 Cube where some cards were physically too long to fit, even if they'd work otherwise). Laptops like the iBook G4 were notoriously difficult to take apart for service. I remember replacing a bad hard drive in one for a guy I used to work for, and it was at least a 2 hour long job for me with screws all over the place. After that, I understood why repair shops would quote such high labor rates when you asked about an iBook repair.

Then I watched things go the opposite direction. The newer Macbooks and Pros became increasingly easy to work on, so you could unscrew the bottom plate and have instant access to everything -- or just remove a small plate to get to the RAM slots. Batteries became removable from the bottom by just sliding an unlock switch. Even the iMac was easy to upgrade at one point (hard drive right there once you took the back cover off, and no need to do more than unscrew a couple screws on the bottom to get to the SO-DIMM memory).

But it's now swinging back to the "non serviceable" mode again, with the pentalobe screws trying to keep people out, soldered RAM on the motherboards, and having to take the whole glass and LCD screens out of iMacs to work on them.

Truthfully, I don't think the TRIM support for non-Apple branded SSDs is that big of a deal. It's been known for quite a while now that Apple wasn't including TRIM support for 3rd. party drives -- and there's even one 3rd. party SSD coming out now with TRIM functionality built into its firmware, so OS X doesn't need to have support to do it. You can turn off the feature in OS X that verifies you're only using signed KEXTs and get the custom ones to work for TRIM support too.

But sure, it's annoying .... and I'm not going to make apologies for Apple about any of this. We still use their products where I work and none of this will make us stop. (As long as you have a warranty, you just hand it back to Apple when it breaks and it's their problem. If you still need it and the warranty is up? Fine... you pay up and let Apple service it and hand it back to you again. Their repair prices have actually gone down in recent years, as they've made more products reliant on them to service them.) Home users are the ones who get the short end of the deal though, as money is more of a problem for us and we tend to buy lesser configurations of machines to save money up front -- intending to add to it later. With Apple, that's becoming a poor decision.

Traditional land lines have the caller ID information generated at the phone company's central office, based on who is paying the bill for the circuit.
Unless you're planning on hacking into their computers - it's not really changeable.

The problem lies with all the VoIP based phone systems out there. These days, there are probably more phone lines using VoIP than traditional copper lines.

The VoIP systems don't even have a way to tell emergency 911 operators what your correct address is. You're expected to provide the right one to go with the number you receive (often with the ability to do that yourself with a self-service web based control panel). So yes, the caller ID information is also controlled by the VoIP server -- and anyone running their own can do as they please with it.

Not necessarily though ... because most of the big, commercial trucks are providing products or services that everyone utilizes. If you place a higher tax on commercial trucks, it winds up redistributed anyway, as it's covered with higher shipping/transportation costs passed along to those buying the products and services carried on the trucks.

So yes, why not tax the larger vehicle that do the lion's share of wear and tear on the roads, and let that help fund any needs for increased road infrastructure for the other vehicles too?

Umm... no. I think I understand the law pretty well. And just like I said, the mistake these guys made really just lies in the details. They could run the exact SAME software, the exact SAME way (requiring a Tor session to establish a connection to it), and get around the accusations of engaging in a conspiracy to sell narcotics by simply eliminating the names of categories of sales that are deemed illegal.

You can't prove that the site operator opted to run an anonymous site purely or primarily to hide the fact that it was for illegal activities. That's nothing more than a theory or a guess. I'd say that many people interested in projects like Tor just believe in the idea that you have the right to conduct a financial transaction without being traced. (A pure cash transaction in the physical world is pretty much just that.) Without these options, we've reached a point where it's nearly IMPOSSIBLE to buy anything over the Internet without the transaction getting logged (or even analyzed for some sort of marketing or statistical purposes). About the closest thing to it is using a site like Craigslist to meet someone in person and pay cash to do the transaction -- but then we're back to using traditional methods vs. online payment and some sort of mail delivery of the product.

Every review I'm reading for devices capable of running Android 5.0 complain about the devices themselves. The new Nexus 9 tablet? Flimsy plastic feel to it ... nowhere near as solid with the sense of quality of construction you'd get with a new iPad. The Nexus 6 phone? Much more expensive than previous versions and again, that cheap feel to it that makes you wonder if it's worth the price.

I think it's great we have options that both compete to ensure they're not leaving out good features. But right now, I'm glad I went with an iPhone 6 and an iPad Air as my tablet, vs. the Android options. It sounds like the better-constructed hardware that will come along shortly running Android 5 still runs the risk of having the Sense UI bolted on top of everything, hurting performance and the simplicity of the original UI.

As far as I'm concerned, the only really legitimate reason for govt. to have gone after the original Silk Road operator was the allegation that the guy placed a hit on someone else. The act of hiring someone to murder another person for you is pretty clearly illegal and the law should pursue that.

The act of running an anonymous marketplace website seems to me like it should fall under "common carrier" status. Of course, the govt. hasn't been interested in looking at things that way ever since the BBS era in the 1980's.

The fact remains though.... the U.S. post office surely helped facilitate the actual delivery of many of those illegal orders placed on Silk Road, yet we never talk about arresting the mailmen who delivered the packages. We never talk about raids on the post offices to search through boxes held there either.

When criminals conduct illegal business via phone calls, nobody ever blames the telco for selling them the circuit that allowed it to happen either.

If you want to argue that Silk Road type websites are illustrating collusion with the criminals by offering categories such as "illegal drugs" to post ads in? You might have a valid point there ... But it seems to me that's little more than a detail that such site operators could get around by simply making broad, more general categories that are clearly usable for LEGAL transactions as well as anything illegal in some countries.

So far, I haven't really heard any evidence that Silk Road 2's operator was directly INVOLVED in any criminal activity. (No requests to murder someone else, no selling or buying of illegal substances himself, etc.)

I'm going to call B.S. on this idea that if you opt out of voting, you're somehow doing everyone in the nation a disservice.

One of this country's big problems, IMO, is that we tend to get so many ignorant people voting, who wind up voting for all the wrong reasons anyway. (I remember back when Clinton was running for office, talking to quite a few women who said they were going to vote for Bill *only* because they thought he was the better looking individual and they'd rather see his face on the TV for the next 4 years!)

As far as I'm concerned, these people could just stay home and not vote at all, and it really wouldn't hurt a thing. Let the decisions be made by the informed and educated who have legitimate reasons to cast a vote for one candidate over another.

Although I definitely voted this this last election, and selected a lot of "very slightly and questionably the lesser of 2 big evils" types ... I also had a couple of really good candidates I wanted badly to see voted in. I've passed on a couple other elections before though, when I truly felt I couldn't give any of the people running my "stamp of approval" by casting a vote in their direction. Sometimes, I think you can really say, "None of these people are even worth my free time or energy to go vote for them." (And in those cases, I say "Screw you!" to the idiots who spout off the cliches like "Then you get the government you deserve!" Because, NO ... I actually think I deserve far better than the piss-poor options I was asked to choose from. So I'm screwed no matter which one of them gets into office, and may as well let other people take the responsibility for helping one of those morons get into office."

This is true in states other than Texas too, from my experience.

People with clear libertarian ideas will often vote for a Republican, simply because he (or she?) makes some libertarian-esque comments while campaigning.

Libertarians tend to try to "sell" their political beliefs on the idea that "Democrats already agree with half of what we're saying, because we're liberal like them on all the social issues .... gay marriage rights, marijuana legalization, etc.", and "Republicans already agree with half of what we're saying, because we're conservative in our economic policies and support the growth of free market business operations."

In reality though? I've noticed that when it comes down to it, it's RARE that a Democrat will talk about alignment with libertarian concepts. The party still seems to believe that while the liberal outlook on social issues is important (especially to differentiate themselves from a Republican contender), they've got to cling tightly to the idea that selectively raising taxes is key to solving problems. As soon as you advocate increased taxes and/or adding government offices/departments to accomplish some new goal? You've totally lost the libertarian-minded voters.

Republicans are in a much better position to claim adherence to some of the core values or tenants of the party, while speaking to a desire for a more libertarian system. (EG. It's not hard to stay Republican and not lose much of your support-base if you decide that you won't, for example, push any legal changes to the status-quo on abortion law. Republicans may have a traditional "pro life" stance, but it's easy to say that's a "personal belief you hold" while abstaining from trying to modify law related to it.) Heck, Ronald Reagan made MANY libertarian comments during his presidency, and he's seen by many as a Republican hero.

I read the woman's article and I guess it hit closer to home for me than some people, because while I'm a white male, I'm married to a black woman who works in I.T.

There are certainly some workplace lessons to be learned from the author's insights, but I'm not sure they're all necessarily the ones she would conclude herself?

For starters? Whether you like it or don't... want to admit it's true or don't ... Geographic location has a lot to do with the workplace environment you can expect and its racial makeup. As she admitted herself, the job she took with Home Depot's corporate offices in the South (Atlanta) was one of the places she felt most "comfortable" among her co-workers. If this was as high of a priority for her as it sounds like it was (to the point of her describing health problems due to stress), I would have advised her never to go to Silicon Valley for work - regardless of the promised pay and benefits.

It sounds like, to an extent, she's upset that she can't "have it all" -- meaning working amongst a large population of blacks (with a nice chunk of them being female as well) who share her values and interests, while still earning "top tier" salaries in her field with the biggest industry "movers and shakers".

I'd counter that we simply don't live in a perfect world, and like everyone else, she has to make some tough choices. As a white male who has always had an interest in technology and computing, I knew it was my career field of choice. At the same time? I grew up in the midwest, and found some of my own values made it difficult for me to do such things as running out to the west coast in the dot-com boom era (even when some of my friends did and a couple wound up millionaires). I chose to stick with doing I.T. for manufacturing firms who couldn't afford to pay me that well, but offered some measure of stability and a concept of "life / work balance" that the big tech places lacked. I had family in the midwest that I didn't want to leave, and good friends that I grew up with as a kid and still hung out with. Considering all of that plus the fact that cost of living and housing was reasonable where I lived, it seemed prudent to stay put.

My wife grew up in Memphis, but I think she always knew that she wanted to get out of that area, in order to find more career success. She wound up in New York for a while, Texas for a while, and now out on the east coast with me. She's definitely not anything close to your stereotypical black woman. (Yes, she listens to alternative and classic rock by choice, and doesn't care for much rap music. She also converted to Judaism, among other things people might find outside the norm.) She never had much interest in playing competitive video games though (well, outside of a bit of Guitar Hero until she got bored with it after playing through several songs). (I, on the other hand, still like playing first person shooters, even though I'm in my early 40's.)

If you're working someplace where it's clear the vast majority enjoys and values things you don't -- guess what? That can happen to ANY of us. I worked in I.T. for union steel shops where everyone's interests included hunting, wrestling, monster trucks and country music. I was the only one who listened to alt. rock instead, and cared about a computer as more than just "a pain in the ass tool management forces us to use". I guess I *could* have tried to go hunting or fishing with the guys or start listening to country to try to make new friends. But I didn't.... I just accepted that we liked different things, and went to work to get work done, period. It's a lot easier to enjoy your free time if you have a paycheck and the bills are all paid.

If you're not willing to do that? That's ok... but you have to do your job search based on what's important, then .... which would be finding like-minded co-workers. I know it exists, but she's right that at least for what she was looking for -- it probably won't be found in the "tech giants" of places like Silicon Valley or the Dallas/Fort Worth, TX area. (As just one example to throw out.... the Emerson corporation, last time I kept up with it, had an I.T. department headed up by a black female, and very aggressively hired minorities at their HQ in St. Louis, Missouri.)